Piano Duo Jam Session with Ryan Benthall of Spaceship

Today I got the opportunity to check in with my good buddy Ryan Benthall of one of my favorite groups in town, Spaceship. Ryan and I have been good friends ever since we met at a Christmas show we were both playing at a few years back. We really hit it off and have been keeping tabs on each others practice through the years. We've both grown a lot during this time as our projects and skill sets have evolved into what they are today. Ryan has always been super supportive of my works in the trio, Fresh Heir, The People's Key and Toymaker and I am a huge fan of his composition skills, keyboard chops and his band Spaceship.

If you ever get a chance to see these dudes play, you have to take a ride to outer space with them! They are some of the funkiest dudes in town and the sounds they produce are far out in terms of production and composition. The group has been hitting through the years with various configurations, but recently has settled into a 4 piece, and I can honestly say, the best yet. Ryan rocks it on vocoder! The music will move you deeply and initiate blast off to higher conscious grooves.

Ryan has such a creative mind and each one of his compositions is a journey through a magical story. He's super humble, well spoken and can go as deep as you'd like in conversation. My type of conversationalist for sure! We get philosophical fast! It's been such a cool process witnessing his growth and development as a musician and human. He is fairly recently married and a most excellent father to a 1 yr old! (That's her singing in the video in the background!) It's been really cool watching each others personal lives evolve and intertwine with music.

Today, to end our chat, Ryan and I jammed on one of my original tunes, The Daze of Comets and Asteroids, a contrafact of the jazz standard The Days of Wine and Roses. This tune will be on my next trio record. Stay tuned for more info about that!